


little child

by nightbloods



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, PTSD, baby bird, team merc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-22
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-08 15:49:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3214778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightbloods/pseuds/nightbloods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He never hears the knock on the door, or sees the worried look on Izzy’s face when she peeks in. It’s not until she crosses the room and lays a hand gingerly on his arm that he realizes she’s there. "</p>
            </blockquote>





	little child

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MusicalWheaten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusicalWheaten/gifts).



> Based on a headcanon Emily hit me with, that I couldn't get out of my head.

Lance can still feel the blood on his hands when he wakes. He sits up and brings his trembling hands to his face and rubs at his eyes; an attempt to wake up or scrub away the scenes playing out in his head, either works. His breaths come raggedly and sporadically, loud in the otherwise silent room.

He looks around at the space he’s in and clutches at the sheets until his knuckles turn white. It’s something he vaguely remembers his shrink suggesting; to ground himself in reality. The room is all blank slates, four bare walls and an empty chest of drawers. His duffel bag is piled haphazardly on a chair in the corner, packed and ready to leave at a moment’s notice. He’s lost count of how many nights he’s spent in Izzy’s guest bedroom, under this awful quilt because she always keeps the air turned up too high. It’s where he showed up after the last fight with Bobbi, when she’d told him to get out and for once, he listened.

He keeps saying it’s because of their job- that he doesn’t have time to find a new place- but Izzy doesn’t buy it. He’s lonely, afraid of being alone in an empty room in an empty house. She never says anything about it, never looks twice when he follows her home at the end of a job and crashes two doors down the hall from her like it’s his home, too. At the end of the day, it’s the only home he has.

His breathing is still harsh, hands still shaking, when Lance reaches blindly for the glass on his bedside table and ends up knocking the alarm clock to the floor instead. It hits the hard wood loudly and the noise echoes all through the room. The screen is flashes a bright red 12:00 at him, never having been programmed because he swears it’s just a few more nights that he’s staying here, so why bother with the clock?

The noise is a little too loud, a little too familiar and it sets him off again. Blood and gunshots and dust and heat all cloud together in his head, impossible to distinguish or control. Lance can hear his shrink’s monotone voice, reminding him to breathe and think of anything else, but that’s easier said than done when his lungs are collapsing in on themselves. He squeezes his eyes shut and presses his palms to his ears, praying to whoever’s out there that it’ll pass quickly this time.

He never hears the knock on the door, or sees the worried look on Izzy’s face when she peeks in. It’s not until she crosses the room and lays a hand gingerly on his arm that he realizes she’s there.

"Hunter?" she asks quietly when he turns wide, terrified eyes on her. He drops his arms and her thumb strokes absently over his shoulder, keeping physical contact because she’s learned over the years that’s what calms him down most; a solid reminder that he isn’t alone.

"It’s just, the clock…" he trails off, gesturing vaguely to the upside down device on the floor in front of them. Izzy sits beside him on the bed and lets her hand drift to his back, soothing tiny circles over his shirt.

Neither of them say anything, they don’t need to. Eventually, Izzy opens her mouth but a song is what comes out instead of any empty words of reassurance she could’ve offered. It’s half made up off the top of her head and half what she remembers her own mother singing to her late at night, years and years ago. It takes a while, but eventually the tensions falls out of Lance’s shoulders and his eyes are sliding shut with exhaustion. She stays with him until he’s asleep again, and hopes to the heavens that it last until morning this time.

He stays in her guest room more often than not, and later he’ll swear she has a sixth sense because every time he wakes in the dead of night shaking from a nightmare, she’s there.

* * *

 

Bobbi glances at the clock as she rolls over, 4:28am. Right on time.

She’s just thrown the covers back to go and comfort the crying infant in the next room, when Lance mutters an “I got it” from beside her. She hears more than sees him slide out of their bed and cross the dark room. It takes a few minutes for the cries to die down enough for Bobbi to hear him murmuring to the little girl. Their voices carry out of nursery and into the kitchen where he’s pacing with her, spouting nonsense while he waits on the bottle to warm. He’s amazing with the kid, and never lets Bobbi forget how easily he can get her to cooperate when Bobbi has exhausted every tactic the books advised her about.

Her eyes catch on the burp cloth thrown across the foot of the bed from earlier in the day, and she’s already awake so she slips out of bed too, and snags it on her way out the bedroom door.

By the time she makes it across the house, Lance has warmed the bottle and taken up residence in the rocking chair in the living room. He’s still talking to their daughter, telling her stories in hushed tones and looking at the tiny girl with that tired, adoring smile that Bobbi can’t help but mirror. He’s just finishing a story that’s a dozen Disney movies he’s never seen all wrapped up in one when Bobbi reaches the doorway, and freezes at his next works.

"You know what your Aunt Izzy used to do for me when I couldn’t sleep, princess?" A tiny hand wraps around his finger and Lance takes it as his cue to keep going, "she would sing to me."

Bobbi stands in the doorway, unannounced and silent, while he sings to their daughter; a quiet, simple song that leaves a familiar ache in her chest. He runs his fingers through the girl’s mess of short blonde curls, and Bobbi is almost certain that her bright, brown eyes don’t leave his face the whole time.

When the song is over, Bobbi steps out of the shadowed doorway and Lance’s eyes fly to her. He shoots her a questioning glance and she holds up the scrap of fabric, “you forgot this.”

She takes a seat next to the two of them, on the arm of the rocking chair. Lance is still absently carding through their daughter’s curls and Bobbi rests her arm on his shoulders, letting her hand find its place drawing abstract shapes across the skin of his back.

"You sang her Izzy’s song," she says after a few moments of silence, when the bottle is almost empty.

"How did you know it?" He gives her a look that’s only a little bit questioning this time, somehow having known all along that Bobbi knew of Izzy’s go-to soothing tactic.

"After my first mission, she sang it to me." She keeps her voice quiet as the baby’s eyes start slipping shut, "it didn’t go so well, I was wreck afterwards. And you know how Izzy was, she took care of all of us." The ache is back when she finishes, it’s not often that they talk about the ones they’ve lost. Lance sits the bottle on the floor and brings his free hand up to meet hers halfway at his shoulder.

"She was good like that. And I think the song worked," he smiles, gesturing at the sleeping infant cradled against his chest. Sometimes they both have trouble believing it’s real; they’re a family.

"Yeah, I guess we should start telling Isabelle a little more about who she’s named after."

**Author's Note:**

> (I've never written PTSD before so many apologies if I messed that up)


End file.
